I get probably 10-15 scam calls a day. Fake Medicare/medicade, home improvement life alert, extended warranty…pretty much every scam under the sun all from spoofed numbers in my area with someone with a thick accent claiming to be John Smith or some name like that. These people are targeting vulnerable people usually elderly people and that pisses me off as it has affected people I know and care about. I’ve tried not picking up for months but the calls keep coming. I then decided that when I have the time while cooking dinner or doing some monotonous task, I’d work on my voice work as an elderly smoker to keep these (usually) guys on the line for as long as possible giving them a random string of numbers and alpha numeric codes as if they were my credit card#, social security#, Medicare card#…
I’ve been wanting to take a step further and instead of just trying to waste their time…creep them out and make them feel uncomfortable. Maybe even to the point where they’d think about different career paths. Nothing excessive…just things like “hey Johnny boy, tell me what youre wearing…ohh yeah I like that…” But as someone against sexual harassment and the like (yes im such a good person I deserve so much praise) it feels wrong even if they’re in the business of harming people and taking advantage of them.
Anyway, as this isn’t something I’d discuss with my normal circle, I was curious how random people on the internet would weigh in.
I did this once at work. Some guy called claiming to be corporate and gave me his “ID number” (If it wasn’t already obvious it was a scam). So, I pretended to do whatever scammer thing he wanted me to. I then told him he had a sexy voice or whatever. He then became very angry and I hung up. I don’t feel bad for that sack of shit who would have gotten me fired or suspended if I did what he wanted. They got some of my other coworkers with the same scam. I swear I work with a bunch of fucking idiots. It was instantly obvious to me it was a scam.
This is dicey though and everyone has different experiences. Maybe it was a different, more skilled scammer on the phone with your colleague. Or they changed the script to make it more believable.
In general I’m suspicious of incoming calls/texts but they almost got me one time. I live in a different state from my cell phone. So most spam calls come from the area code of my phone number, an instant red flag. But this time, the caller had figured out where I lived and spoofed the number of the local sheriff.
Now as it turns out, I had recently reported a crime to the sheriff’s office so I was not surprised at all that they would call me back. The caller stated he was a deputy and gave me his name (which I searched and was a real deputy with the dept). But then he gave his reason for calling and it was unrelated to what I had called them about. In fact he started telling me a warrant had been issued for me not showing up in a trial I had been called as a witness. I actually was aware of being a potential witness in a trial but my attorney was point of contact and had not told me a trial date had been set.
Could have been a communication error but something didn’t compute. I sensed something was off and that thing, of all things - is that he was being too nice. I’ve watched hours and hours of police body cam footage and the caller simply didn’t speak the way cops usually do.
So I told him I had been the target of identity thieves and I needed to be able to verify his identity before answering anything. I hung up and called the sheriff’s office directly and sure enough they confirmed no warrant, nobody had tried to call me.